This study explored the effects of note-taking training on Korean college students’ notes during academic English listening tests. A total of 61 college students were randomly assigned to two different groups: Group A that later received training in note-taking strategy and Group B that did not. Group A received note-taking strategy training on three separate times, totaling 60 minutes (30 minutes, 15 minutes, and 15 minutes) that spread out over two months. The two groups took listening tests before and after Group A was trained. The results showed the positive effects of the notetaking training in relation with the groups’ note-taking behaviors. After training, the trained group used more and frequent notes whereas the untrained group’s number of notes decreased. Individual students who drastically increased the number of notes after training (in Test II) showed more systemic framework of notes for Test II than before training (in Test I). The present study is meaningful in that it utilized the different analyzing methods on the quality of notes compared with previous studies.

This study is to investigate the relationship between teaching and testing restricted on English listening comprehension processing. 726 listening activities in three textbooks of High School English and 80 questions in four nationwide English listening comprehension tests for high-school first grades were analyzed and classified into micro-skill categories of top-down, bottom-up and interactive processing. The results revealed that the tests put emphasis on the top-down processing in contrast to overemphasis of the textbooks on the bottom-up processing, whereas interactive processing took up a small portion both in the textbooks and tests. While the number of questions requiring bottom-up processing reduced in the tests, all the questions of bottom-up processing were focused only on one specific micro-skill, comprehending details. Further, despite diverse demonstrations of top-down micro-skills, each micro-skill question for top-down processing in the tests took some specific forms, which might lead students only to studying for preparation for the specific forms rather than for enhancing general comprehension abilities. Further pedagogical suggestions and implications for listening teaching were suggested.